By Sukanya Shantha
Mumbai: A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Thursday (July 31) acquitted all seven accused tried for their roles in the 2008 Malegaon terror blast case in which six died and over a hundred were injured.
BJP leader and former MP Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Major Ramesh Upadhyay (retired), Ajay Rahirkar, Sameer Kulkarni, Sudhakar Chaturvedi and Sudhakar Dhar Dwivedi all stand acquitted.
“Terror has no religion because no religion can advocate violence,” special NIA court judge A.K. Lahoti said.
“I am fully aware of the degree of agony, frustration and trauma caused to society at large,” judge Lahoti said, “more particularly to the family of victims by the fact that a heinous crime of this nature has gone unpunished.”
“However, law does not permit the court to convict the accused solely on the basis of moral conviction or suspicion … The court of law is not supposed to proceed on popular or predominant public perceptions about the matter. The more serious the offence, the higher the degree of proof needed for conviction.”
This is a case in which NIA special public prosecutor Rohini Salian resigned claiming that the NIA was going out of its way to water down the case and had been given a standing instruction to go easy on the “Hindu terror” accused.
The court began by reading the prosecution’s arguments and the accounts of the witnesses examined in the case.
The prosecution successfully established that a blast happened on September 29, 2008, but was not able to prove that a bike said to have belonged to Thakur was used for the blast, the court noted. The prosecution, the court held, was able to establish deaths and injuries due to the blast.
But when it came to evidence, the court made serious observations. The collection of primary evidence from the place of incidence was not carried out properly, the judge pointed out in court.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
